


Recette du Jour

by Odamaki



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Cooking, Everyone is Gay and Happy, Everything needs more butter, F/F, Food, Friends to Lovers, Gen, M/M, Mycroft is Greg's Bit of Posh, Mycroft-centric, Pre-Mycroft Holmes/Greg Lestrade
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-05
Updated: 2016-06-05
Packaged: 2018-07-12 10:35:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 21
Words: 15,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7099396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Odamaki/pseuds/Odamaki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mycroft cooks, because it's all he has and all he's interested in outside of his work. And then, one day, the little grocery shop in the yard changes owners unexpectedly, and there's a lot more on the menu than he'd bargained for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Artichauts au Vin Blanc

**Author's Note:**

> These were all originally posted on my tumblr, unedited and unbetad, and can be accessed on the [ Masterpost ](http://odamakilock.tumblr.com/post/144308600779/complete-french-au-masterpost)
> 
>  
> 
> **Huge thanks to those who read it post by post, reblogged, commented and were generally lovely and supportive. This is for all of you. :)**
> 
>  
> 
> Recipes were adapted from [ Marmiton ](http://www.marmiton.org), [The French Kitchen ](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0385607016/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_dp_ss_1?pf_rd_p=569136327&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=0385604769&pf_rd_m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pf_rd_r=B85BVES1HPFQ7NBF08G8) and [The French Market](https://www.amazon.co.uk/French-Market-Fran-Warde/dp/0385608233/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=Q818CZFJF9Q7EQAA7ARS) both by Joanne Harris and Fran Warde, or else my own. 
> 
> Bon Appétit!

He’s a private man. He leaves the office at 5pm, and may as well cease to exist until 9am when he returns. Once in a while he stays late in order to deal with some extraordinary business or other, but more often than not, the clock in his office softly trills 5 bells and he picks up his suitcase and leaves.

They really don’t know him at all.

It’s spring and the city is already summer-hot, teasing with the promise of a long, dry summer that may never materialize. He walks when the weather is pleasant enough; never hurried; blending in with the crowds. He detours, as always, away from the stations and high street and into the back roads where the buildings are older, and more forgotten.

There’s one road that suits him more than others, a courtyard and enclave of shops- butcher, bakery, greengrocers, gift shop, health shop. He eschews the latter.

He’s always there at the close of the trading day, just in time for the 5:30 close to pick something up. Up until now, no one has noticed.  
There are apples in front of the grocers; there always are, and bunches of flowers and a man in apron that Mycroft has never seen before, taking down signs with a hook on a stick. He nods and makes way for Mycroft as he approaches. “Feel free,” he says, gesturing the inside of the shop, still laid out for sale.

The man speaks French with an accent, which makes Mycroft spare him a second glance before returning his attention to the produce. British, he concludes, rusty with his second tongue. The old man who usually runs the place must be ill or else retired; a relative.

Uninteresting.

There are new season strawberries and new kidney potatoes with flaking skins that are slightly waxy under his fingers. There is satiny rhubarb in long sticks like pulled sugar and a humble, odiferous pile of green garlic. At the back, like dragons eggs, he finds the tight-shelled globes of young artichoke.

“Just these,” he says, placing them on the ply-board that serves as a counter. The man weighs and bags them for him, waiting as Mycroft jingles the correct change from his pocket.

“How will you cook them?”

“Au vin blanc.”

“Then here-” he drops a bulb of the garlic a twist of thyme into the bag as well and passes it over. “Try it with those. No, it’s on me.” He smiles, waving away Mycroft’s excess of coins. “Enjoy.”

“Thank you.”

He doesn’t linger. Tucking the bag under his arm he slips away into the street. Behind him he hears the man whistle, and then the clatter of the screens coming down. Closed for business.

The artichokes are small and spin in languid circles on the marble counter when Mycroft spills them out of the bag at home. He bought four accounting for the size and the fact that they will be his only dish this evening. He trims them slowly, cutting away the bases and flaking off the tough outer leaves to reveal the beginnings of a tender heart. He scoops out the middle and lines them in a baking dish with garlic and thyme. A lash of olive oil, a screw each of salt and black pepper- enough to bring about a sneeze- and then a bath of good white wine.

He cossets them up in foil and bakes them until they are meltingly soft. Removed from the jus, he adds butter to the liquid generously until it reduces to glossy indulgence. He spoons it into the vegetable hearts and piles it onto bread bought that morning, and eats it alone and in silence.

The artichoke is a thistle made a miracle, he thinks, while chewing. Left to grow it becomes almost impossible to break down to this tender feast, the hard scales keeping out all but the most determined diner. Most people are too intimidated to try it. They’re missing out.  
Mycroft wipes butter sauce from his plate with a crust and recalls the clatter of the greengrocer’s shutters.

The man had been expecting him.


	2. Barbue au Thym

He has thyme leftover from the day before, and garlic. The fridge is otherwise mostly empty. He considers the day and checks the forecast, and leaves the house early to visit the docks before work. When 5 o’clock rings from the clock in his office, he has a recipe in mind.

Something simple.

He goes, as always, to the yard first and it is 5:25 when he sets foot on the cobbles there. The greengrocer’s is still open and lit from within by the yellow glare of strip lighting. It would benefit from something softer, Mycroft thinks, but it does mean he can easily check for any flaws on the produce.

He picks out potatoes one at a time until he has a handful of them. They are small enough to be very nearly spherical, some of them, as shiny as if they’d been bees-waxed, and the larger ones shedding under his thumb. He drops them one at a time into a paper bag and takes them to be weighed.

“How were the artichokes?” the man asks. His arms are bare and dusted with light dry soil from his produce.

“Good. Thank you for the herbs.”

There’s a curl of a smile. “My pleasure. Anything special planned for these?”

He must be older, Mycroft reasons. His hair has gone over completely to grey. Perhaps not a son of the old man, then? “Fish,” he says simply. He names it.

“ _What’s that_?”

“Excuse me?” The sudden switch to English surprises Mycroft.

“I’m sorry, I’m forgetting my French. What type of fish is that?”

Mycroft fumbles at the paper bag. “A flat, brown fish. It’s at it’s best now. About so big,” he adds, holding his hands up in indication.

The other man lightly thuds a fist on the ply-board in understanding. “Barbue!” he says, and there’s that butter curl of a smile again.

“Yes,” Mycroft says, perfunctory, dropping his head.

The man drops Mycroft’s change into the otherwise empty till and locks it. “Take a lemon,” he adds, as Mycroft turns to go. “They need using.”

The waxy zest palms into Mycroft’s hand as he leaves.

—

It will take time to cook, though the process is simple. He dries the fish with kitchen towel and cuts the thyme until the kitchen smells of the sea and a garden in one. He marinades the fish with the herbs and the lemon, the garlic and pepper, and sits with the papers for an hour in meditation until he may finally grill it.

The potatoes slip from their skins under his fork and the fish falls off the bone almost obscenely. The smell of lemon lingers on his fingers afterwards. He clears the bones into the bin and rinses the plate by hand.

It needed more butter, he thinks.


	3. Côtelettes d’Agneau Vert Pré

Mid-week he treats himself with an earlier start to the day. Habitually an early riser, anyway, he slips into the office as the sun first starts to warm the steps and so entitles himself to leave at 4:30 in the afternoon.

It is balmy, almost humid, with the promise of rain. There has been intermittent thunder but no precipitation, though by Mycroft’s instinct that will change towards the middle of the night.

The yard seems full of shadows when he enters it. The grocer is serving another customer, the gift-shop woman standing in her doorway, eyeing the old wooden window frames and thinking about leaks.

Mycroft crosses the cobbles and vanishes into the copper-tang air of the butchery.

He has no especial thoughts on the butcher himself; a florid man prone to gruff silence, but he believes the butcher’s assistant to be a fool. He has a full beard, for one thing, which never fails to strike Mycroft as an unhygienic choice for a food worker.

The greengrocer is clean-shaven.

“Sir,” the butcher greets with a nod, and then leaves him to appraise the meat in silence. The assistant whistles while thumping a cleaver rhythmically through a rack of pork. Then he gossips, nodding his chin towards the gift-shop woman.

“She’s keeping cats in the rooms above the shop; Sally,” he names the lady who runs the bar-come-confesserie on the edge of the yard, “says she can hear them yowling through the wall. It’s against regulations.”

“Mind that blade, Anderson.”

Mycroft points to a set of chops and the butcher deftly wraps them. “Enjoy, sir.”

He will cook them with butter, Mycroft thinks. Plenty of ground pepper, the last of the lemon, and the last of the potatoes. And something green.

He leaves the assistant regaling the uninterested butcher with a joke and heads for the grocers. The gift-shop woman, toying with the ends of her hair, bobs at him shyly and then vanishes into her store.

Something green.

“Hello, you’re early today,” the grocer says, affable. He wipes his hands off on a strip of green paper and nods at the bag dangling in the crook of Mycroft’s arm. “What have you bought?”

“Lamb.”

“The cauliflowers are good.”

Mycroft considers; a cream of cauliflower perhaps…The grocer notes his hesitation.

“Or the watercress.”

He has it in a wide flat box, the stems kept fresh by a dash of cold water and ice. The leaves are virulently green and, pinching one off, Mycroft can almost taste the peppery iron of them in the air. Pleased, he takes up a bunch, and a handful of parsley besides.

The grocer has been to the shore, Mycroft notes, sometime before the afternoon. His hair is tousled by the breeze and as he leans over to pick up Mycroft’s goods, Mycroft catches the smell of fresh, salt air and ozone. He has muscle like wire but handles the leaves delicately, twisting a screw of damp tissue around the stems as if they were flowers. He holds them out in a bouquet. “Do you need a bag?”

“No, this will suffice.” Mycroft tucks them into the same bag as the lamb and leaves, suddenly hungry.

—

The potatoes simmer, rolling back and forth like indolent children; the lamb chops spit under the grill and make the air of his kitchen savoury. A chunk of butter, parsley and lemon juice battered together make for a garnish and a seasoning all in one. He leaves the watercress bright and raw on the plate, piles the meat on top and sits on the narrow patio to eat it.

The butter slides as it melts and the watercress is sharp against the richness of the meat. It’s salty in the best of ways; the tang peculiar to marsh-grown lamb; meat seasoned with seaweed from the inside- iron and salt.

Something wholesome.


	4. Dattes au bacon

The day ends too late to go shopping. He eats out instead, alone at a corner table at one of his haunts on the waterfront. The food is pleasant but rendered unmemorable by the way his mind keeps ticking over his work. Eventually, it gets too late to even be ‘late’, and he swallows the better part of a bottle of wine to drown his thoughts, and shambles home in the dark. 

He passes the yard, empty at ground level. There are lights in the upper-stories above the gift shop, and bar, and grocery, but no sign of any living thing save a streak of tabby cat that vanishes on sight of him. The air smells faintly of cabbage and garlic, and his mouth feels dry.   
He comes home with a sense of misplaced guilt, fumbling water from the taps. Despite having dined, he wants something else to appease the gnawing sensation in his middle. 

A search of the cupboards unearths a packet of dates forgotten since Christmas and a wrap of paper containing three slices of bacon from breakfast the weekend before. It’s smoked, fatty bacon, and still quite good. He fetches it out. 

His fingers work clumsily at the task, plucking at the meat inefficiently to roll it around the dates, which resemble nothing so much as shrivelled bullets. He tears each rasher in half lengthways and ekes it out to cover no less than six dates, which he lines haphazardly on a baking tray. The sight of them, wonky and badly assembled, makes him tut, but he puts them in the oven anyway and stands, a cold towel pressed to his face, while they cook- it’s a fine line between calm and sober. 

The dates are scalding when he takes them off the tray. The bacon slips in loose coils around the fruit, and he stands to eat them, one by one, over the sink, daubing his fingers on a cloth to keep the grease at bay. 

It’s a welcome burst of sweetness and salt, but it lacks the comfort of a proper meal. Even the restaurant, with its well-reputed fare, somehow lacked the comfort of proper meal. 

His absence, he supposes, must have been noticed. But surely all customers come and go, skip a day, skip a week, leave and never come back? 

Mycroft deposits the tray into the sink and leaves it overnight. 

The night is warm, the sheets are cold, and the smell of bacon grease lingers. The dates are sickly weights in his stomach. Mycroft rolls into the pillow and vows; tomorrow, sober, and vegetarian.


	5. Endive au Gratin

After every excess comes contrition.

Mycroft wakes later than is normal for him, yet earlier than most people, breakfasts sparingly and sets himself to work.  
Scouring the kitchen goes some way to improving his mood and a mug of water laced with lemon juice is medicinal for the lingering queasiness. Age and alcohol are swiftly becoming poor friends.

He works through his day much as normal, or at least, as required, and manages to overcome the trials of the day before. It is no great success but the matter is put to rest until the next time it inevitably raises it’s head again. Feeling like Canut, he leaves at five o’clock, still worrying over the trouble.

It’s a trail of thought that takes him on autopilot to the yard, where all at once, just by stepping through the arch, it slips from his mind.

The butcher’s assistant waves at him through the window but he doesn’t enter. The glare of lights from the shops is thrown out in hard squares to be broken across the cobbles; made brighter by the weight of the clouds above. There’s chatter from the bar, and the faint reel of music from a pair of old speakers as he slips past, bee-lining for the grocers.

“Evenin’,” the grocer says, blindly over his shoulder, in the process of restocking crates. His blue apron- polycotton, worn through at the lower hem- dangles between his knees as he stoops and hefts a sack of potatoes up, shaking them into the near-empty display crate. He balances it there, scooping them loose from the paper with a dull rattle with one hand, utterly confident. Mycroft quietly clears his throat.

“Have you any endives?”

The man turns slightly, lips pursed as though to whistle for them, and then his teeth show clean and white with a smile.

“Some left behind the counter, sir.”

He pivots and points with a muddy finger.

Clean earth, Mycroft thinks; dry baked clay. It feels a little strange to step behind the counter, where there’s an overspill of produce. The endives are almost at knee height, alien-old in the crisp blue plastic box. He picks them out one by one by the knuckle between the pure jade-and-ivory leaves and the gnarled witch root. Plenty. They are perfect; it’s the season for them after all.

“From Belgium,” the grocer says behind him, dusting off his hands and helping him, from the wrong side of the counter, to turn them all into the silver dish of the weighing scales. “They produce the best ones. A little bitter.”

“I was thinking of a gratin,” Mycroft admits, despite himself.

“That’s how they eat them,” the greengrocer agrees, tapping buttons on the scales without looking. “With ham and cheese.”

The ham is a temptation. Mycroft considers it, and nods, but has ideas of his own. He picks up another bulb of white garlic and asks, “How much?”

The man looks at the screen upside down, calculates the addition to the price, and gives an unexpectedly Gallic shrug. “Let’s call it the nearest round number.” They do, and to Mycroft’s favour.

“Tell me how they turn out,” the grocer adds, passing Mycroft his paper bag.

Mycroft cradles it into the crook of his arm, over the horn of his umbrella. “Yes,” he finds himself agreeing, sidling out from the counter.

The other man leans on it thoughtlessly.

“See you again.”

“Yes,” Mycroft says, for he supposes it is inevitable.

—

He blanches the endives, the tightly packed leaves like little spearheads softening and turning tender in the water. A simple cheese sauce of butter and flour whisked into a roux, a steady trickle of milk and then thickened, then Gruyere, Parmesan, and a scrape of nutmeg. Salt and pepper and he tastes it, adds more, tastes it, more again, until his palate is gummed up with the taste of comfort.

The thought of ham has stuck with him, but as he has none he is spared from that luxury. Instead, for the sharp salt flavour, to complement and cut through the richness of the cheese, he unjars and adds a few anchovies, _Provencal_.

The fish slide over the crowns of endive and are foolishly lost in the cracks between them when he pours over the sauce. A smattering more cheese on the top and then impatiently he puts it under the grill, watching it brown and bubble. The endives peek through like teeth in a tanned face.

He eats it with bread, dripping sauce and spreading crumbs over the tabletop, using the crust to wipe the dish clean.

And so much for contrition.


	6. Fouace Aveyronnaise

On Saturdays the streets are busy and the office is closed. It’s a period of enforced time off, which Mycroft by no means relishes. He takes work home with him- in his head. The sensitive documents have no place outside of the four walls of the city offices, but as far as Mycroft is aware, there’s no policy against simply remembering everything.

He whiles away the morning with an impatience typical to him. The world runs on a 24-hour basis; he feels it unreasonable that he is not allowed to work if he wishes to. He has so little else to occupy him.

Hobbies are just trifling time wasters. Mycroft reads, he brushes up his language skills, he listens to music. It’s never really enough.  
He has next to no interest in outdoor activities, though stiffness of the lower back forces him out for at least an hour a day simply to walk.

He does one route and one route only.

And of course, he goes shopping.

He has always disdained the supermarket, but quite when the habit of daily visiting such small shops as line the yard began, he can no longer recall. He likes the smaller shops. There’s something old-world about it that appeals to him in the same way that a three-piece suit and a watch chain appeals to him. It’s almost more for the show of the thing.

Obligation takes him to the docks early, or else he won’t get anything at all and the yard on Saturdays is always a bustle of noise until at least 2 o’clock. In fact, it’s not until nearly four that he turns his nose towards it. It’s a compromise; he cannot expect much in the way of good produce, but neither will there be a crowd.

He dislikes the mess that they leave; scraps of paper, and dropped food, the ashy remains of cigarettes, and the slovenly disarray of the café chairs. Entering the yard, he pauses, for the shutter is down over the front of the grocers. Evidently he is done for the day. The baker’s shows an all but empty window and the butcher’s is open but Mycroft has nothing to buy from there. He hesitates, and is still considering back tracking towards the waterfront and see what can be found there, when someone hails him.

“Pardon?”

“I said, ‘you’re just in time’.”

The sun is in Mycroft’s eyes as he turns towards the bar-come-café, but he sees the man once he raises a hand. The interior is dim and cool as Mycroft comes to the doorway.

“You wanted something from my shop?”

“It’s no trouble. I can go elsewhere.”

“That’s trouble to me. I don’t want to turn away business. Anyway, I’m not shut yet. Come in a moment.” He beckons Mycroft in. “Take a seat; I won’t be a minute.”

There are cups on the table, the grocer’s own and a discarded one, and plates. There’s the usual subtle throb of music in the background, and a few other patrons but otherwise they have this side of the building, along the windows, to themselves.

“Do you drink coffee?”

“I-yes?”

“Sit and have one then; help me finish this. Sally?”

“Yes?” she calls from the other side of the room, straightening up from a conversation with another man.

“Can we have another coffee, and a plate?”

“Sure.”

Mycroft awkwardly sinks into a chair. “I didn’t mean to intrude.”

“Not at all,” the grocer says, dismissively. “You’re not in a rush?”

“No.”

“Perfect.”

The coffee machine roars into life behind the counter, and someone at another table laughs.

“You’re English, I hear.”

“Yes.” The other man breaks out into a smile, and his native tongue.

“ _Me too. Sally told me- I was convinced you were born and raised here._ ”

“ _I have a good accent_.”

“ _You do. How were the endives_?”

“Good,” Mycroft replies, switching back to French. The other seems unbothered, and they continue the conversation as such. Sally clips over, the soft hem of her skirt fluttering around her knees as she sets down the contents of a tray in front of Mycroft. Gently steaming coffee, and a jug of milk. There is sugar on the table wrapped two cubes at a time in slightly waxy paper. Mycroft carefully peels a pair open with his thumbnail and drops them one at a time into the drink.

“Here.” The grocer picks up a knife from the table and cuts into the remains of golden brown ring of a loaf. It cuts beautifully under the blade, not crumbly, not too bread-like in consistency, the crystallized sugar hardly falling away at all. He slides a piece on a plate over to Mycroft and helps himself to a second.

“From the bakery?”

“Yeah; we had a busy morning and thought we’d come over here for a breather and a pick-me-up. Fresh out the oven.”

It’s soft against Mycroft’s palate, buttery, and faintly citric. He chews, and there’s slivers of crystallized orange in it, as well as the sugar, which cracks under his teeth. The grocer, like a boy, dips his slice straight into his cup and vacuums it down, sodden with coffee.

“Fouace Aveyronnaise,” Mycroft says.

“That’s right. It is. The healthy man’s brioche,” the grocer jokes. Mycroft isn’t sure about that, but he likes the bake on the piece. He’s had it before, usually around midsummer.

They finish their drinks without wasting time, and Sally collects the leftover fouace and wraps it in a bag for the grocer, who unpockets some coins and pays their bill.

“Thank you,” Mycroft says as they leave.

“My pleasure. So, what were you looking for?”

“Fennel, shallots, lemon, parsley, tarragon, thyme, and potatoes.”

“Alright,” the grocer says, appraisingly. He lifts the shutter for them and sets about compiling Mycroft’s order into a picturesque heap on the counter. The herbs lend a pleasant air to the place, and he packs them last on the top to prevent them from being crushed.

“Enjoy.”

Mycroft takes the bag and adjusts it in his grip. He looks up, taken aback, as the grocer speaks again.

“See you Monday?”

“Yes,” Mycroft says. “It’s possible.”

“Lestrade,” the other man says, extending a hand. His arms full, Mycroft can only meet him halfway, a weak shake.

“Holmes,” he replies.


	7. Galettes-saucisse

Spring fades into the white heat of summer. Mycroft concedes to it by removing his vest and walking later, after dinner, compromising between sweat and being bothered by flies.

  
The trees burst out into full leaf and a steady trickle of fruit begins passing through the shelves of the greengrocers; peaches and nectarines, the last of the cherries and sweet apricots, which Mycroft buys frequently to slice and spoon up with cream.

Once in a while he sees him outside of the shop, barelegged atop a creaking bicycle, with a fishing rod over his shoulder. On these occasions they don’t stop to speak. Mycroft is shy of doing so and Lestrade must sense it. He waves though, if his voice won’t reach out across the distance to greet him. Sometimes Mycroft even waves back.

Gossip readily provided by the butcher’s assistant informs him that Lestrade is the old man’s nephew, and it’s angina keeping the old man away. More deliberate probing reveals a somewhat chequered paper trail. Nonetheless, Lestrade does not seem to miss being part of the metropolitan police. In truth, Mycroft can’t picture him there.

They make… small talk. Sometimes in English, more usually in French. Mycroft makes his purchases almost daily, and when he skips a day, Lestrade doesn’t mention it, though Mycroft fancies that his greeting is warmer.

As they move through July the town rouses itself from a drowse and starts contemplating fire. There are neighbourhood meetings and fireworks licenses distributed, and debates over this or that for a parade that Mycroft studiously ignores until the very evening when, all at once, the street is abruptly alive.

Part of him despises it: all the clamour and the sweat, the raw itinerancy of the event, the overpricing of something that is, in his opinion, cheap. Then he inhales and can smell the cordite in the air, the savour of onions, the caress of warm sugar from the candyfloss makers; batter hisses as it’s poured onto a hotplate and beneath it all, the woody smell of wine casks.

He’s alone in the crowd, just observing in a way that not even the tourists accomplish. The sun sets in a roar of orange over the rooftops, late, and the cafes and bars spill into the street with good cheer. One child, pursued by another, careens around his leg trailing a spitfire of plastic and LEDs, shrieking with delight.

Chocolate.

Mycroft swallows back the water in his mouth and passes each stall with cautious interest. There are games, and a band. Earlier there had been dancing. He turns away from the crowd.

The yard is strung with lights for the occasion and candles wink from each table in the bar. It’s a quieter stretch compared to the main road, milling with the occupants and their friends. There’s a haze of smoke from a barbecue, mingling with that of the smokers’. A round-faced man unfamiliar to Mycroft squeezes at a harmonium, and someone else plucks a rapid, bubbling tune on a guitar. Yellow and white like frangipani, the gift shop woman toys with the end of her plait and sways in time.

“Roast beef!”

The butcher’s assistant, drunk, has spotted him. He throws up his arms exuberantly. “Have a drink!”

“Thank you, no. I’m just passing.”

“Lestrade is just coming; you should stay,” the assistant laughs, pulling on his beard. “He’ll be annoyed to miss you.”

The round-faced man gives a bemused smile. “Anderson,” he says, taking one hand off his instrument to pick up his glass. “I’ll have that drink.”

“Yes, yes. Same again, Mike?”

“Please.” He plays a little jaunt and bobs his head at Mycroft in a more respectful greeting. He’s English, Mycroft thinks; a friend of Lestrade’s. He’s about to say so aloud when the man lifts his chin and indicates something over Mycroft’s shoulder. He turns.

In clean white shirtsleeves for once, is Lestrade, his hands full of cornets of paper. He breaks into a smile at the sight of Mycroft and holds them aloft like an Olympic champion. “Perfect timing!”

The music stutters to a halt to be replaced by a recording as Lestrade passes them out. The paper is hot to the touch and spotted through with grease. He presses one into Mycroft’s hand and makes him take it or else drop it. He pours him a glass, a good host, and bumps the lip of his own against it. “ _Try it_ ,” he says.

The buckwheat makes the galette pleasingly chewy; the merguez is sharp with sumac and cumin, oil of harissa and fat of lamb. The sausage bursts against his teeth.

Lestrade sucks and blows air between his teeth. “Hot,” he comments, chasing it with beer. He licks the grease from his lips and sits on a potato crate. It is base and simple food, in a simple setting. Overhead an industrious house-martin chases for flies and then a rising whistle warns them briefly before the sky explodes into glitter.

A ragged cheer from the yard.

Mycroft stops his tongue with galette and, when Lestrade moves up, sits down beside him.


	8. Huîtres aux lardons

“What would you do with oysters at this time of year?”

Mycroft looks up from where he is placing beans into his Saturday shopping bag and puzzles. “Leave them alone and wait until April.”  
Lestrade laughs. “Not an option, I’m afraid. I was given some yesterday.”

“Given?”

“It’s a long story. Anyway, I’m not sure what to do with them. You don’t see many good oysters in London.”

“No,” Mycroft considers. “I would grill them.” He holds out the price of his groceries that day.

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Lestrade replies, taking the cash and dropping it into the till with a rattle. “And I have another question.”

“Yes?”

It’s a warm day and the shop is sweet with the smell of fruit. Lestrade’s ears are sunburnt and a thin sweat dews his throat around the unbuttoned collar of his shirt. He leans across the counter, sheepish and conspiratorial.

“Can you open oysters?”  
Mycroft hesitates; the invitation is transparent, but it seems to be more of a whim of the greengrocers rather than anything contrived. “I asked Sally,” Lestrade says, reading his expression. “But she’s got plans tonight and they won’t last another day.”

“Well…”

“We could use the kitchen upstairs.” Lestrade points to the ceiling. “If that’s more convenient.”

“I suppose,” Mycroft says. It’s only oysters. He hasn’t been invited anywhere for so long he’s fallen out of the habit of accepting it gracefully.

“Just show me how to open one.”

“Have you an oyster knife?”

Lestrade shrugs, expression blank. Mycroft purses his lips.

“What time?”

Lestrade brightens so much that he makes the apricots seem dull. “Anytime after six.”

Mycroft nods and, clutching his produce, leaves with a lot to think about.

—–

The heat eases off after four, though the sun will remain high until long into the evening. Even in fresh clothes, Mycroft feels awkward. The shutter is down to but a foot from the floor, and light spills out from underneath.

“Hello?”

“Just a moment-”

A pair of hands appears and lifts the metal, to allow him through, before closing it fully behind him. “What’s all this?” Lestrade asks, noting that Mycroft has not come empty-handed.

“I bought a few ingredients that I assumed you may not have. And this-” He holds out the bottle and Lestrade takes it, reads the label, lifts his eyebrows and nods.

“For the oysters,” Mycroft says, hurriedly.

“No point wasting good shellfish on cheap wine,” Lestrade agrees, and his smile goes buttery and crooked. “Thank you.”

“Where is the kitchen?”

“Upstairs,” Lestrade says, “Follow me.”

They squeeze behind the counter and through a door set into the wall there, straight up a narrow flight of uncarpeted, somewhat dusty stairs. Whatever Mycroft keeps telling himself, this feels illicit; like moving into unknown territory.

It opens out into a reasonable-sized apartment, with sash windows overlooking both the yard and the street on the other side. Lestrade flicks on a lamp and moves to throw one window wide open, letting in the smell of trees baking in sap and the mechanical cheep-whirr of swallows.

“You don’t live here.”

“No,” Lestrade says, putting the wine in a fridge that has seen better days. “It’s my uncle’s flat. I live a few roads over. I just come in now and then to air it.”

“I heard he has heart trouble.”

“He’s waiting for surgery,” Lestrade confirms, and then takes a bag from the fridge and deposits in the sink. “There’s two dozen and I’ve already washed them.”

“Good, that’s more than enough.” Mycroft unpacks a knife and borrows a clean towel. It’s been a while since he had to shuck an oyster and it takes him two of the shells to recall the knack. Lestrade hovers at his shoulder, watching with interest.

“Can I try?”

“Don’t cut yourself,” Mycroft warns, passing him the blade and the towel. He demonstrates again how to angle the knife and where to cut, and lets Lestrade make his attempts while preparing other ingredients.

The kitchen begins to smell of the sea. Lestrade humphs and hums in his efforts, the shells crack, the grill glows cherry red and tinks as it warms. Mycroft peels and crushes cloves of garlic, slices bacon and shreds parsley.

“How’re these looking?”

“Not too bad. You’ve cut the meat a little on this one.”

“Can’t win ‘em all,” Lestrade says philosophically.

They take turns placing them on the bars of the grill pan. Lestrade rasps a knife through a fresh loaf and leaves Mycroft on guard over the fish while he sets a table with mismatched and old-fashioned chinaware. Mycroft spoons in the bacon and garlic and herbs; a rounded pile for each shell and cooks them until the fat is running from the meat and the edges of the shells are chalky.

The sun is setting. It streams through the windows, and a breeze and a bluebottle together make the curtains shiver. Lestrade swats it away with the tea towel and fetches the wine from the fridge.

“ _Bon appétit_ ,” Mycroft says, once they’re seated. The plate of unstacked oysters almost fills the table but their plates are small and it doesn’t feel so crowded once they start to eat. They alternate with the butter knife, smearing it onto the bread (thickly in Lestrade’s case, sparingly in Mycroft’s). They suck the hot oysters from their flaking shells and each one is a burst of pungent salt and savour. A salad of green beans tossed in olive oil and pepper cuts some of the richness, and the acidity of the wine is refreshing.

It is civilized eating in an uncivil manner. They have no napkins, just kitchen towel, and though Mycroft dabs his fingers between shells, he finds himself licking them just as often. Lestrade has no such foibles, and sucks the butter from his thumb like a hedonist.

“Who taught you to cook?” he asks, once the initial appetite is sated.

“No one, I just use books.”

“That’s fantastic. I assumed your mother taught you or something.”

“My mother is English. She’s naturally a terrible cook.”

Lestrade laughs. “Is that why you moved to France?”

“Amongst other reasons,” Mycroft replies neutrally.

“It’s pleasant,” Lestrade agrees. “I could retire here.” He looks at the diminishing plate of oysters and growing rubble of shells. “I’d be fat, but at least I’d be happy.”

Mycroft clears his throat, refills their glasses, and says nothing.

—

They finish with coffee and flat peaches, languidly peeling the skins off with their thumbs and eating them as they are. They talk, now and then, but Lestrade seems to feel the value of a silence, and how to make one comfortable. It’s a boon to a man who has grown poor at small talk.

By mutual agreement, Lestrade washes the plates and Mycroft dries them.

“Thanks for coming. That was really nice.”

Mycroft stands a stair lower then him, slightly obscured in the shadow of the stairwell. “Thank you for inviting me.”

“Perhaps again sometime?”

Mycroft pushes the oyster knife deeper into his pocket. “Perhaps,” he agrees. “And good night.”


	9. Iles Flottandes

The idea of asking Lestrade to his house for lunch (not dinner. Not yet.) haunts Mycroft. Ideas go back and forth in his mind on how to ask, and what to cook. The grocery is usually closed on a Sunday and he makes the bold assumption that Lestrade won’t have anything more interesting planned. Perhaps fishing, but nobody fishes at noon.

Nothing too ostentatious, he thinks. Nothing as gourmand as oysters, but nothing as dull as a sandwich. Fish, he thinks, simply pan-fried with a salad of courgette and broad beans. Tomatoes. Baked aubergine?

A classic for dessert- Meringues. One of his favourites and simple enough once you learn the knack of it. He plays it out step by step in his imagination: the simmering pan of milk and vanilla, sweetened with sugar. Next, a bowl of egg yolks, sunny, whisked, and then the two cooked tenderly over a bain-marie until changes in the proteins make the custard thicken. A dash of orange flower water; it’ll smell like the fouace.

Next, egg whites, vigorously beaten until mountainous, cut with sugar for shine and simmered in islands in warm water. Soft lumps of meringue, unlike the English variety. They are round and soft, full of air and pale as belugas. He has a certain empathy with them.

He would fill the kitchen with the smell of citrus by zesting an orange. The fruit are not at their best in summer but it’s only for a taste. Boil the rind, very finely cut, in sugar and leave it to crystallize; it will taste sweet and bitter.

Finally almonds and burnt sugar sauce drizzled over the top with the orange. The impossibility of Laputa made in edible miniature. Lestrade, he hopes, will be charmed.

And so he plots and says nothing until the timing feels right and the yard is sufficiently quiet to risk it.

He arrives very early on a Saturday morning. Nothing is open, though the bakery smells strongly of bread and butter. Strangely there is no sign of crates having passed over the cobbles this morning. He’s about to knock on the shutters, when Lestrade appears from the side door.

“Lestrade.”

He startles and gapes at Mycroft, so much taken aback that he forgets his French.

“ _How- what_?”

Mycroft looks down. He is holding a suitcase. His own hand tightens on the bag he is holding, full of eggs, and an orange.

“You’re-”

“It’s my uncle,” Lestrade says over him. “The surgery’s been; I don’t know, they’re moving him to another hospital out of town and-”

“Oh, of course, you must go.”

Lestrade hasn’t shaved. He’s holding his phone in one hand, which trills suddenly with a message. “How did you know I was here?”

“A hunch,” Mycroft said. Lies. “People gossip.” He moves the bag behind his back and Lestrade, thumbing a reply, doesn’t notice.

“There’s a taxi waiting,” he says.

“Have a safe trip.”

Mycroft feels childishly hurt. He doesn’t ask when Lestrade will be back; the man can’t possibly know at this stage, and it would be an intrusion. Lestrade shoves anxiously at his sleeves, revealing broad tanned forearms. Sweating under his waistcoat, Mycroft feels too aware of how they compare.

He’s been foolish.

“ _Listen_ ,” Lestrade says, taking one step forward, one step back. Another trill. “Shit, I’ve got to go.”

Mycroft nods, mute. Lestrade steps back and then in a rush, comes forward decisively. It’s brief, and yet no more substantial than a vision of an island in the sky, but for one moment it exists. It’s things yet to be said and dishes yet to be cooked. Lestrade takes a breath and a second, and this time it’s has a sweetness of strength.

Then it’s over.

“I’ve got to go,” Lestrade says, apologetically. “I’ll get in touch.”

Mycroft stands and watches Lestrade leave, look back twice, and then finally have to run for his car.

He goes home and puts the eggs in the fridge and clears away the pans that he has no more interest in using today. He sits on the patio and melts in the heat, weak as meringue, the ghost of a dish not eaten.

And what lingers most is the backward glance, and the bitterness of orange.


	10. Jarret de Veau

He cooks for an appetite that keeps failing him. Mycroft still visits the yard for bread and meat, but the shutters remain closed on the grocery and the place is too tinged with something unpronounceable for him to fully enjoy it any more.

It’s a chore to have to go out of his way for produce. The supermarket is nearest and the plastic packaging irritates him. The beeping of the checkouts irritates him.  
Eventually, after a week, he finds a stab of hunger born of anger. The weather continues to be hot, if not stormy, and this adds to his mood. He’s angry with Lestrade; though in other moments he’ll conclude that the man didn’t really do anything wrong other than have a terrible sense of timing. Mycroft curses old age and uncles the world over, but when he runs out of energy to do that, he douses his own anger by blaming himself.

After a wallow in guilt, his annoyance rouses itself all over again because, after all, this is why he’s avoided the fool’s game for so long.

–

“Three?” the butcher says, faintly amazed. The Englishman’s been patroning his shop with a face like thunder for the last week, nit-picking over the cuts, and now he’s appeared out of a deluge the very face of apathy and ordered meat enough for a dinner party.

“Entertaining?”

“No.”

“Well, these are very nice,” the butcher says, at a loss for words. He wraps the pale meat into paper and runs the purchase through the till. Leaning over the tall glass counter to pass it to him, the butcher notices what appears to be a large bottle of port already in the man’s bag.

“Well, enjoy.”

Mycroft leaves the way he came, umbrella up, and shoulders hunched. The butcher folds his arms and leans back against his block, puzzled. His assistant emerges from the back and cranes to see what he’s watching.

“What was wrong this time?”

“Nothing. He just bought three veal shins; just for him.”

The assistant shrugs. “That’s no problem for us.”

“I confess, I don’t understand the English.”

The assistant crouches to catch a last glimpse of Mycroft through the rain. “No, he is just weird. Besides, you know what it is.”

“I do?”

By way of reply, the assistant just points at the grey shutters across the corner of the yard.

“Eh?” The butcher takes a moment to tally up the score. “Heh!?”

—–

Oblivious to the gossip, Mycroft shakes the water from his umbrella and ducks into his flat. He has, in truth, no need for so much meat but the recipe is for three and he’s feeling irrationally stubborn.

He cooks at once, as it will take a few hours to braise. Unobserved, he rolls his sleeves up and puts on an apron to brown the meat in hot oil, the fat spitting. The veal set aside, he adds carrots and onion, celery and garlic and cooks them until they are tender. Next, honey. A generous spoonful, and after it’s dissolved, a generous slug of port to deglaze the pan. The wine is rich and pungent; it’s a winter dish more than anything but for once he has no qualms about bucking tradition.

He returns the meat to the pot and covers it gently. Then it has nothing to but bake in it’s own juices for hours and hours.

Mycroft parks himself on the sofa to wait with a generous measure of the remaining port.

By the time the stew is done, both the veal and Mycroft are falling off the bone. He eats it in a daze, the window open and rain making damp patches on his kitchen counter. The weight and warmth of it in his stomach doesn’t quite sober him, but feels like the answer to hunger though it seems to achieve nothing.

He eats two of the shanks over the course of the whole evening, dully amazed at his own gluttony, and goes to bed nauseas.

His dreams are restless, troubled by calves in illogical places, as he hunts the yard for an ingredient that cannot be found.


	11. Kouign-Amann

He is walking home via the waterfront when there’s a screech of bicycle brakes from the other side of the road.

At first he pays no attention, but a soft call, and then a louder one make him look up.

She waves at him desperately, leaning far over the handlebars to check for traffic before freewheeling across the road towards him, legs stuck out like a child’s, plait flapping over her shoulders. “Excuse me!”

The brakes complain again as she comes to a stop, breathless.

“Miss?”

“I have something for you-”

It’s a large, man’s bicycle with a high crossbar that causes her some trouble as she dismounts. She clips her shin against it without complaint (her calves are already bruised, Mycroft notes, from the pedals), and unhooks her skirt from the saddle with mask-like embarrassment, only showing a little more thigh than intended.

Mycroft puts one hand on the handlebar nearest him to steady it as it wobbles.

“Um, I mean, I had something for you- I left it at the cafe because I can’t see the yard so well from my counter and Sally says she can see everything,” the gift-shop woman says. She pauses. Mycroft is looking at the bicycle.

“He lent it to me.”

“There’s a slow puncture in the rear tyre.”

“He told me that too.”

“What is it?”

She blinks with confusion for a moment. “Oh! He asked me to give you a note- he didn’t have your address or phone number or anything, and he was only stopping by for half an hour to find some papers in the flat.”

“I see. Thank you for the message.”

“He said I shouldn’t let you just walk off without seeing you at least open the envelope.”

“Well!” Mycroft blusters, taken aback. He nearly says ‘that was presumptuous of him’, he nearly says ‘excuse me for disappointing you’, but she looks at him and says, with unswaying honesty,

“He’s my friend, and I promised.”

—

They walk back to the yard together, the bicycle wheels clicking; the woman’s shoes a soft tap-tap on the paving. Presently she says, looking up at him sidelong,

“It’s Mycroft, isn’t it?”

He nods, a tickle of irritation at the thought of his name being shared around the yard. He wonders what’s in the note. If he replies, it’ll be to give the man a piece of his mind and may he choke on it. This is undignified.

“My name’s Molly,” she says, unperturbed by the distant thunder in his expression. He glances at her. Up until now, he’d regarded her as a rather silly specimen, but face-to-face, he has to wonder if it’s more of an act that he’d realised.

It’s early afternoon, thank goodness, and the Cafe is in the lull between the lunch rush and the tea rush. Sally is propped on her elbows at the counter, wiping the glass down with a soft cloth. “Good grief,” she says as the pair of them walk in.

Molly plops herself down in a chair at once. “It’s so hot,” she says, peeling off her cardigan. Her bare arms are pale and wiry. Sally waves at Mycroft to sit down too.

“I’ll bring it over.”

“Sit,” Molly adds, and against his will, he does, still curdling.

He spots it at once- a pale blue envelope on a shelf with the coffee beans. Sally whisks it down and goes into the kitchen, where she vanishes for a few minutes. She returns with a tray; iced-tea and a teapot and a gleaming pastry confection, and the envelope tucked in her fingers.

“I don’t really have time-” Mycroft begins.

“Yes, you do. Men always come in and say they haven’t any time and then I’m sweeping them out at closing time,” Sally says. She passes Molly the tinkling glass of ice, and sets out three tiny glass teacups on the table. The tea is pale green-brown, poured over a sugar-cube and rich with the smell of menthol.

“Here you are.” She passes him the envelope and the cup at the same time.

“You read it,” he accuses.

“No, I was read it. Lestrade is a lovely man, but he’s no poet,” Sally says, cracking a knife through the flakey pastry. She catches his expression and laughs. “It’s not a poem. And he didn’t tell me everything and no, I didn’t steam it open. It’s been up above the coffee machine and the envelope was old anyway. It probably unstuck by itself.”

She’s almost too pragmatic to argue with. Molly sighs around the straw of her drink, and comments on the pastry, and Mycroft opens the envelope. Perhaps it is something more prosaic than he’d imagined. Some of the romance seems stolen.

There’s a page torn from a notebook inside, and some of the message is, in fact, just practical. A temporary forwarding address, a cellphone number, an apology. In cramped writing at the bottom (and Mycroft can imagine him, arm hooked around his pen to shield his work) there’s something else that makes the lump rise in his throat, and then all too ridiculous, an instruction.

“Preserved lemons?”

Sally looks up. “What about them?”

“He said you’d give me some.”

“Cheek,” she says, but she gets up and fetches him a generous jar of them anyway, thick with salt. “If you call him, tell him that’s on his tab. “Try the kouign-amann. I made it.”

He takes the slice and gives it an exploratory scrape with his knife. The outside is dark brown and crisp, the inside soft and many-layered. He takes a bite. It almost melts.

“It’s good.”

“Thanks,” Sally says, curls shaking through a smile. Mycroft notices that under the table, the women have slipped their hands together. He doesn’t comment.

“Did he say when he’d be back?”

“No,” Mycroft folds the paper into his jacket pocket. “His uncle is still in intensive care.”

“Oh, poor man,” Molly says. He could have asked either of them, Mycroft realises, if he’d wanted Lestrade’s contact details. Instead he’s been stewing like a fool.

“I really must be going.”

“Show your face around here more,” Sally tells him before he leaves. “It’s boring otherwise.”

He gives her a sour look and she just laughs. The music plays, the layers of pastry gradually unravel.


	12. Lisettes au Citrons Confits

There’s a fisherman on the jetty; a rough man in old jeans, slinging the line out with practiced ease. A baseball cap obscures his face, but even so, Mycroft knows who it isn’t. It’s nearly sunset and the sea is one great ripple of light; indigo and orange, shell pink slashed with white reflection, and above it the sky sinks like in a blaze of nectarine.

The box at the man’s feet is half full. He’s lined it with wet newspaper in place of ice and there’s a board partially across the top to prevent any still-living catch from leaping out. As Mycroft approaches the man, he reels in another two silver-blue arrows, jerking on the line.

“Good evening.”

The man grunts and nods.

Mycroft, hands behind his back, leans and looks into the box. The fish are alive with colour, tiger striped with electric blue and teal. Mackerel.

“Would you sell me some?”

The man shrugs and agrees to pass over three for a euro. The fishing’s good this evening and he has more than he can eat. Out here, young mackerel, lisettes, are as common as breathing. Mostly he’s going to use them for bait.

Mycroft goes home with them, sheers off the pearly scales in the sink with the back of a knife, guts and beheads them with satisfaction.

They’re fresh enough for ceviche, with finely chopped shallots, lime, and chili, except he has none of those things to hand.

Instead he grills a pepper until the skin has blackened and slides off of the flesh under his thumb. He chops it and mixes it with garlic, capers, and thyme while the fish spits under the grill. A drizzle of oil brings together the salsa, and then he lifts the jar of preserved lemons from the cupboard and pries it open.

All he needs is the rind sliced thinly, and with three-quarters of the salsa, spooned over the fish.　

He adds the rest when the fish is steaming gently on the plate and eats it with peppery salad leaves and bread. He thumbs at his phone throughout the meal and then, almost on purpose, presses the dial button. It rings, maddeningly twice, and then clicks as it connects.

“ _Hello_?”

“Good evening.”

“ _Sorry? Who’s- hello_?” There’s a clatter as Lestrade switches the phone from hand to hand and changes languages. “Sorry, who’s this?”

“It’s Mycroft Holmes.”

He can hear Lestrade’s surprise. “Oh! Oh my god, you rang. You got my letter?”

“Evidently.”

“Yeah, I know but you rang.”

“I thought you meant me to,” Mycroft replies, awkwardly.

“I did, I just… I didn’t think you would.”

“If it’s a bad time…”

“No, no, no- no. No, now’s fine. How are you? How’s the yard? Is my shop in one piece?”

“It’s still standing. I’m well.”

“Great! That’s great!”

A heartbeat where neither of them knows what to say, and both worry about breathing too audibly.

“How is your uncle?”

“Ill,” Lestrade says, bluntly. “He might recover; might not. Furious about having to move to a care home, but his mobility’s gone.”

“I see.”

“Sorry. What did you make for dinner?” He can hear the click of Mycroft’s fork on the plate.

Mycroft tells him, prosaically, and Lestrade listens. “It sounds good. I wish I was there.”

“Another time,” Mycroft offers, meaning ‘me too’.

“Thanks for calling. It’s good to hear a familiar voice.”

“It’s fine. Good night, then.”

“Mycroft,” Lestrade says before he hangs up, sounding suddenly 30 years younger. “When I get back, do you want to go out for dinner somewhere?”

Mycroft considers the offer with surprise. He stirs a caper across a little pool of lemon oil and licks the salt from his lips before he answers. “No,” he says. Lestrade, muffled, a little wounded inhalation.

“Come over to mine.” Lestrade is far away and the idea feels safely surreal. “I’ll cook you something instead.”


	13. Mirabelles

Towards the end of the summer, Lestrade sends him a message. ‘There’s a plum tree,’ it reads. ‘Ask the Yarders and save me some.’

Curious, he does so. Sally leans her elbows on the speckled counter of her cafe and gives him a sphinx-like smile. “He’s got a soft spot for plums, you know,” she says, amused. “They’re his favourite.”

Molly smiles, impish for all she’s trying not to show it. “Don’t tease, Sally. We’ll show you.”

She takes a basket in the crook of one pale elbow, her skirt flapping around her knees. Sally’s jeans are old and worn in the seat and too short in the leg. “No good dressing up to go climbing trees,” she says. “You’d best hang back.”

In the corner of the yard is a gate, always locked, which leads past the less-than-scenic refuse collection point fro the yard, and then doglegs through another gate to a walled garden that Mycroft had no idea existed.

“Almost no one uses it,” Molly says. “It’s in the deeds because of the residences over the shops, and we all chip in for a gardener to come in a few times a year and keep the weeds under control but that’s about all.”

“The baker’s wife uses it,” Sally corrects, pointing to a row of shabby vegetable beds. There’s mint running wild all around them, and rosemary, waning poppies and the untended descendants of years of amateur gardening. In the corner, drooping under the weight of fruit, is a plum tree.

The plums are yellow as egg yolks, kissed with the barest mottling of scarlet. Wasps patrol, and the air is honeyed with fruit sugar. Sally looks up, hands on hips. The lower branches are in reach, but pruning and neglect have let the tree itself grow tall. She reaches out and plants a foot in the crook of a branch and pulls herself up a foot. “Plenty up here. Pass me the basket.”

“Mind the branch doesn’t break,” Molly says. The basket vanishes into the leaves. Molly shakes a tea towel from her skirt pocket. “Would you hold the corners, please?”

He does so, pinching three in one hand and letting her grasp the forth, taking the lower hanging fruit to fill it.

“Mind, some of these are rotten and loose,” Sally warns, just as a brown plum thuds to the floor beside them. Mycroft looks up in alarm.

“Just try not to knock them off on us; Mycroft, can you reach those?”

“What?”

“I can’t reach.”

The leaves brush against his hands and feel crisp from the long hot summer. The fruit tumble off their stalks readily into his palm, and it’s a matter of moments to fill the tea towel to bursting. Molly collects it onto the scant grass and bites into a plum, the juice running over her fingers.

There’s a bloom on the fruit that wipes away, revealing the taut, glossy skins underneath. They smell of sugar and sunshine, and taste rich with a little tart burst as one eats nearer the stone.

“Someone take this,” Sally says, dislodging lichen, and leaves. More plums thump to the floor as the basket dangles lower. Mycroft takes it from her. The weight of it is incredible for such easy work. She drops to the floor, brushing dirt from her clothes and takes a fruit as her reward before picking the basket up again.

“That’s good.”

“Should I-?” he offers.

“Nah, I can manage it. Molls, you’ve got plum on your arm.”

“It’s fine.” Molly empties the tea towel to fill the basket to brimming and slowly, they wander back.

“I should come get some of this mint too,” Sally comments as they close the gate and lock it.

“ _Tart au mirabelles_ ,” Molly hums, eating another.

“Jam. And chutney.”

“ _Armandines_!”

“ _Clafoutis_ ,” Sally smiles. “What will you do with yours?” she adds, turning to Mycroft.

“Nothing,” he says. “I’ll bottle them.”

The women exchange a glance that almost makes him blush. “You can use my kitchen,” Sally offers. “Rather than cart them home loose. I’ve got plenty of empty jars.”

___

He takes the jar home under his arm, still warm. It took very little time to wash the plums and boil sugar with water to make syrup. Sally had wordlessly passed him cinnamon by the stick, and star anise. She’d peeled off a twist of lemon for him. Standing over the stove, they’d waited for it to brew before pouring it over the plums, halved and stones removed. “Try flambé with brandy,” she’d suggested, wiping the jar off for him. “They’ll be good for Christmas. He’ll love them.”

Mycroft puts it on the corner of his kitchen counter, gleaming like a sun, sweet with promise.


	14. Nougatine

There’s a sweetshop by the train station which, now and then and more than he’d like to admit, Mycroft visits. It’s one of those old-fashioned sort, optimistically there to appeal to the tourists they don’t usually have, with glass jars along the back and cellophane packets to choose from. Chocolate, of course, and bon bons and caramels.

Mycroft likes it because despite the very Frenchness of it- the marzipan fruit and almond paste biscuits and marshmallows, it reminds him of sweetshops he knew as a boy, back in England.

He dawdles a moment, spoilt for choice and then selects a measure of nougatine. It’s a simple confection. He used to buy peanut brittle when he was young and it’s not so different; nuts and boiled sugar syrup, the peanuts replaced by flaked almond- called ‘wolf’s teeth’ in some places.  
He comes blinking back into the sunlight outside the station, by the tubs of fading ginger lilies. The paper bag is striped with pale pink lines, soft and pliable around the sharp pieces of nougatine. He chooses one thoughtfully and eats it there and then. The hard caramel softens against the roof of his mouth and sticks to his teeth when he chews it.

He folds the top of the bag over to tuck it into his pocket and continue his walk, looks up across the station forecourt and freezes.

“Lestrade.”

The man’s carrying a suitcase, phone in the other hand, one eye out for a free taxi, evidently just having exited the station. Mycroft hasn’t spoken terribly loudly, but Lestrade looks around at the sound of his name anyway. His mouth falls open.

“Mycroft?”

“You’re here? You’re back?”

“My god, how the hell did you know I was coming?”

“I didn’t,” Mycroft flounders in surprise. “I couldn’t have.” He swallows back the nougatine, at a loss with what to do with the bag, with Lestrade, with his own expression.

“I was going to call you later,” Lestrade says, “I thought it’d be too short notice, but- well. There you are. Listen,” he barrels on, in case Mycroft has thoughts of escape, “I need to take this to the flat; take the car with me, we’d be going roughly the same way, wouldn’t we? You’re not busy?”

The hope in his tone is too much to be crushed, and without either agreeing or disagreeing, Mycroft puts himself into the back of the taxi with him, the suitcase wedged between them.

It’s not a long drive back to the centre of town, though it feels like an age. Mycroft worries at a piece of almond in his back tooth, and worries about where exactly all this is leading. Lestrade scrapes at his thumbnail in an equally nervous gesture.

“You’ve been ok?” He says finally.

“Oh yes, fine,” Mycroft replies at once, and the flippancy seems uncaring and not at all what he’d intended. “Your uncle is…?”

“Settled at the Park- it’s a care home just across the district. It’s good. There’s a little garden.”

“Ah.”

“The flat’s going to be full of dust…” Lestrade mutters to himself. He fidgets with his phone. The taxi idles to a pause by the road leading up to the yard. “I’ll pay and you can go on if you want?”

“No, I’ll get out.”

They split the fare and the taxi trundles away, the driver giving them a laconic backwards look. Lestrade shuffles on the pavement. “Come over later,” he says. “I’ve got to sort the flat out but, supper? I’m sure I can whip something up.”

“I’m not sure…” the remnant flavour of nougatine’s turned cloying on his palate. “Perhaps-”

He’s standing awfully close. Lestrade adjusts his grip on the handle of the suitcase and dips his head. The paper packet in Mycroft’s hand has gone tacky, the nougatine lumping together from the heat of his palm- he never did think to put it in his pocket- and Mycroft melts along with it. After a moment of leaning forward, he makes himself lean back and frowns.

“Later,” he says gruff to hide his embarrassment about kissing on a street corner like who-knows-what sort of person. Lestrade brightens. He doesn’t mind Mycroft’s hand on his shirtfront, gently pushing him back. “Really?”

“Only if you clean up properly first.”

“Promise.” He’s boyish, suddenly, and then in the next moment, wicked. “Can I have some more nougatine?”

“No. Go away,” Mycroft tells him, holding the packet firmly behind his back.

“Best not spoil my dinner, eh?” Lestrade laugh. Mycroft does not, but he’s not exactly peevish either.

“I’m joking,” Lestrade says, more softly, one hand leaning on the wall. “It’s good to see you. I’ve missed it.”

“Buy cream,” Mycroft tells him, instead of ‘me too’. “I’ll bring something for after.”

Lestrade smiles, his face tanned, his teeth almond white. On a whim, Mycroft holds out the bag for him. Lestrade looks at it for a moment and then carefully unrolls the top, the weight of it still in the cup of Mycroft’s palm. He puts the suitcase down and adds his own hand underneath to steady it, while he pulls a piece out from the mass.

“Thanks,” he says, holding it up momentarily before vanishing it like a communion wafer into the hollow of his cheek.

Mycroft waits until he is out of sight around the corner before taking a piece himself, and makes it last all the way home.


	15. Oeuf cocotte

When Mycroft arrives, Lestrade is buttering ramekins.

“Sorry,” he says, fumbling with the door. “Come in- I’ve mostly tidied up.” He glances back and looks sheepish. “Mostly.”

He’s made a fair job of the kitchen, Mycroft allows, as long as you don’t look too closely at the rest of the flat.

“I brought this,” Mycroft offers. Lestrade sucks butter from his thumb and takes the box, putting it on the counter and peeling the lid up one-handed.

“Plums!”

“For afterwards,” Mycroft adds, putting one finger firmly on the lid to close it again.

“It’s a nice garden, isn’t it?”

“A touch neglected.”

“Yeah, but a lot of things up for grabs.” Lestrade washes his hands, looking pleased. Mycroft supposes he ought to. It’s not like he goes fruit picking for just anybody.

Or in fact, ever before.

“Is there anything I can do?” he asks, before he can start to feel embarrassed. Lestrade glances around the kitchen, cataloguing tasks.

“Cut some bread?”

Mycroft does so, sawing the knife through the crust as Lestrade fits rounds of ham into the base of the ramekins, followed by cheese and then into each dish a single raw egg.

“How much pepper?”

“Plenty.”

The flat is quiet and still, the birds exhausted out of singing and even the flies becoming ragged and clumsy. One butts against the window and then shimmies sadly along the sill until it falls out of the gap. Someone, distantly, is practicing guitar scales, up and down, over and over. It should all seem dull, yet it isn’t.  
Lestrade shoves the ramekins on a tray into the oven and straightens, considering. With nothing in their hands, the evening threatens to turn awkward.

“Glass of something?” he suggests, instead.

Mycroft shrugs, pseudo-casual. “If there’s anything.”

They find something, because it’s preferable to nothing, and stand leaning on the wide-open window with its narrow balcony. The eggs slowly solidify as they idle there, looking across the town.

For a while, Mycroft feels torn between finding something to say and not saying anything at all, but as the silence ticks on it seems to settle and it’s not so bad after all. Lestrade’s breathing slows and his hair is ever so slightly ruffled by the scant puffs of air that pass for a breeze.

“I like it when it’s quiet like this,” Lestrade says, presently. “Not all the time, but I need it.”

He leans back and stretches. “Those eggs must be done by now.”

They eat at the table, scooping out the steaming ramekins onto the bread and being a touch liberal with the wine. Lestrade tells him about the town and the hospital, about plums and baked eggs and asks, “I’m not boring you?” and Mycroft refills his glass, shakes his head and gestures for him to go on.

It’s late when Mycroft leaves, feeling like he’s walking on sponges. His footsteps echo in the passageway out of the yard, and with their clatter, Lestrade’s parting words, hot in his ear.

‘Let’s do this again tomorrow.’


	16. Porc aux cèpes

The long hot summer has dried out the trees, the edges of the leaves crisping and curling up. A slow drift of them begins to build up in the gutters.

“I’ve been in the woods. Buy pork,” Lestrade messages him one morning. Mycroft regards the message and it’s non sequitur with some curiosity, until he comes to the correct supposition.

“You seem pleased,” his secretary comments, with mild suspicion. He takes the files from her outstretched arm and drops them into place before him to read.

“It is an untold benefit,” he replies, “To have someone on one’s side with the foresight to do the legwork, without being asked, and without obliging me to be involved.”

“You’re welcome,” she says in a tone that reveals she suspects he’s not talking about her at all, and returns to her desk. He’s been happy lately, she thinks, and distracted. Tell tale signs of something she would never have expected from the man. She enjoys being here too; it’s nicer than Moscow. Anthea quietly folds papers back into their envelopes and reseals them, and sits uneasily on the sense of impermanence.

—-

Lestrade brings them to Mycroft’s flat in an honest-to-goodness lidded wicker basket lined with torn newspaper. It’s such an uncharacteristic nod towards old-world chichi that Mycroft stares for a moment. “It’s my uncle’s fishing basket,” Lestrade says, embarrassed. “It’s also very useful for mushrooming.”

The ceps are beautiful ones, all shapes and sizes, but each with a warm brown caps exactly the colour of baked brioche. ‘Penny buns’ Mycroft recalls, in rural British parlance. The stems swell out from below the caps like conical flasks, veined in white, and the underside is all delicate creamy sponge.

“Remarkable.”

“Top secret,” Lestrade replies, gleeful.

They have a faint mushroomy smell to them, mixed with the scent of deep earth and, on the larger specimens, a hint of something musky.

“How do you propose-?”

“Very simply,” Lestrade answers, and shows him.

The knife squeaks through the mushrooms as Lestrade slices them, trimming any places they have already been nibbled at. Mycroft breathes a bottle of red wine for them, and eases out the cork on a bottle of white for the pan with a satisfying pop.

Mycroft beats an egg and Lestrade rolls the floured and seasoned loin chops in it before covering them on both sides with breadcrumbs and a little herbs de Provence. Cracked black pepper, salt, the usual staples, tickle at their sinuses and bring an element of the outside indoors.

They fry them one by one in plenty of oil until tender, and drain them, leave them to stay warm and golden-crisp in the oven. Mycroft snaps the heads from fine green beans and drops them into a bath of boiling water.

Ceps slide in the pan, across a slick of butter and salt. Garlic is added, which browns almost too quickly. Wine splutters up when added, in a hiss of steam and transfigures itself into a sauce.

It becomes more than a meal. Mycroft seems to taste everything separately, and it’s as if he’s unknowingly acquired either too many senses or his own have suddenly become far too sensitive. It’s the break of the crust under his teeth and the meltingly soft, fatty pork. The mushroom is nutty and buttered, the beans sweet and refreshing. The wine slips down his throat with too great an ease, deep and earthy, hint of red fruit and tobacco.

It’s the touch of the tablecloth against his forearms and the fading evening light. It’s lightheadedness from the wine and sitting too close.

It’s a kind of foreseen but unasked for gravity between their chairs, pulling the furniture until at the end of the meal, the plates empty and scattered, and the glasses still full. They are elbow to elbow looking out across the scant garden, until they realise there’s nothing worth looking at there. Everything interesting is closer.

Kissing with the zing of acid in their mouths from the wine, and the mellowness of mushrooms, they become an unplanned backwards stumble into the flat. No lights. They bury themselves in the dim blue dark against their own exposure; Mycroft shyly, conically, round and pale. He closes his eyes to be blind to it.

Lestrade’s back, burnt brown by the sun, arches under his hands, following the oldest recipe in the book- slide across the heat until melting, then salt.


	17. Queue de langouste

It’s a long, stolen morning.

They slow-boil eggs, Lestrade lazily clearing the dishes from the night before, neither of them acknowledging the rumbling of the washing machine.  
They take turns in the shower, which somewhat overlap. Afterwards, Mycroft wallows in the pale sunshine of his living room, draining coffee, his body awake in every synapse. He hasn’t felt like this in years.

Lestrade whistles tunelessly, stretches out and they pick through a newspaper until contentment edges into boredom. They look at each other and consider. Lestrade rubs at the side of his own neck thoughtfully. “How about a walk?”

They go out. Together. It’s not quite noon and Mycroft locks the door behind them, head ducked against any possible eye looking out amongst his neighbour’s windows. It’s neither shame nor embarrassment- people have always assumed that he is what he is, he can’t stop them- but he has no desire for any stranger to blunder in their path and start making things political.

Lestrade wears the same clothes as the night before, a little more creased. Mycroft wonders if it looks more or less obvious given that he’s changed his own outfit. Lestrade, in contrast, hasn’t given it a second’s thought.

They don’t go to the yard. It’s not quite the right time for that, so they walk instead to the other end of town and a street packed with junk shops and antiques. Lestrade proves a great knowledge about the potential of the former and a profound ignorance of the latter. Mycroft discovers his information lies in very much the opposite direction, and they go some way to redress the balance.

They don’t buy anything. It’s more for the pleasure of talking on common ground. Coming across a cafe, they intend to stop only for coffee.  
Sitting on chairs of dark wood and beige wickerwork, they perform a silent pantomime of disinterest at the menu, until Lestrade finally says, “I’m feeling a bit hungry, actually.” Mycroft admits the same. Too much uncommon exercise.

They flag the waitress to ask what the soup of the day is, and allow her to read them the specials.

“Lobster,” Lestrade echoes.

“Only the small sort,” Mycroft says.

They order two, and the dark rose commas arrive served on a bed of flat, golden pasta, frills of salad leaves around the edges of the plates. Lestrade takes one look at it, and adds to the menu with a bottle of crisp white.

The table is small and rickety on the pavement. Lestrade wedges a beer mat underneath one leg to balance it. An entrepreneurial sparrow ventures boldly around their feet, picking up crumbs from the breadbasket. The breeze is cool, the wine colder. Lestrade rolls his sleeves up to the elbow, and seems to merge with his surroundings. He fits here, Mycroft thinks. A facsimile of this is how he’s always going to remember him.

“Is it alright?” Lestrade asks.

“It’s very good,” Mycroft replies. “I’m trying to make it last.”


	18. Riz au lait

The vineyards out of the town criss-crossing the hills are a blaze of gold. As the year winds down, it gets busier. Apples, the later-fruiting variety, pour through the door of the greengrocers. There are olives and figs in good quantity too.

Lestrade, when he has the time, goes out with the hordes of other hopefuls, scouring the woods for mushrooms. Further away, on still days, there’s the crack of gunfire. The tourists have left- it’s hunting season.

Sally in the cafe cooks up vat after vat of cassoulet, and her patrons don’t seem to tire of it. She doesn’t appear to follow one particular recipe, calling back perhaps to older roots. She shrugs. “If I have it, it goes in,” she says pragmatically.

Mycroft, for his part, spends a Sunday bathing beef in a whole bottle of red with fatty bacon and bay leaves. The smell of it permeates the edge to the weather, and when Lestrade arrives for dinner, for once he appears torn as to what he wants to eat first.

They have it good, and like every good thing, Mycroft knows it won’t last.

The end comes more or less trailing the first frosts behind it.

“Take your shoes off of my sofa.”

“And hello to you, big brother,” Sherlock says, languidly dropping his legs to the floor. He eyes Mycroft upside down. “Big being the operative word. You must be disgustingly happy.”

“You’re aware, no doubt, that you’re supposed to reheat that.”

Sherlock looks at the tin in his hand. The fork rattles, it’s sides smeared with milk sauce. “Waste of time,” he says. “I’m surprised you have it in the house at all. Still, we all have our weaknesses.”

“Yes. How’s yours? I see you’re still roughly rehabilitated. No word on when you’ll relearn manners?”

“Now, now, we both know I’ve not been sent here to talk about my misbehaviour. This time, and I’m trying not to be sick, I’ve been sent to pull you up on yours.”

“Ironic, isn’t it?”

“I have a partner. I’m not dragging civilians into anything.”

“He’s ex-police.”

“Emphasis on ‘ex’. Forced into early retirement. Hardly the best candidate for recruitment. Surely you didn’t think-?”

Mycroft hangs up his coat and plucks the almost empty can from Sherlock’s hands. “Don’t eat on my sofa.” He takes it to the kitchen and turns the tap on hard into it. The smell of the milk and sugar is sickly. Grains of rice bounce up in the flow of water over his hand and cling to the sides of the sink.

“It’s a dalliance. Nothing more. Go home and tell the office to stop prying.”

Sherlock laughs. “Prying’s what they’re for. And you’re good at lying to yourself, which is why they sent me. Because I know, brother mine. You’re getting too close.”

“I’m not.”

“Then you won’t mind the message I have to pass on, then. It’s decision time: you have to give it all up, one way or the other.”

Mycroft drops the can into the recycling and dries his hands, lips pinched shut. His work is his life. The challenges of it stave of boredom and stagnation. The thought of not having it is fearful.

And yet…

“You’ll have to anyway,” Sherlock goes on, lounging. “You’ve finished here. If you can stop acting like a love-struck ninny, they want to send you east.”

Mycroft has been half expecting it. “Beijing.”

“Worse!” Sherlock sounds gleeful. “You’re off in 6 months, tops. Off, or out. Or,” Sherlock looks around in distaste, wiping his mouth. “Stay here. Well, not here, obviously.” It’s not Mycroft’s flat; it’s just in his name. It’s not his job, either, when it comes down to it, he owns very little except the money.

“Go home,” Mycroft tells him, short of breath. “Tell them I have everything under control and I am not compromised.”

Sherlock picks himself up off of the sofa, hands deep in the pockets of his ridiculous coat. Mycroft glances down. Of course- they’re listening. Sherlock mouths- ‘be careful’.

The flat still smells of cold rice pudding even after Sherlock has left. Nursery food. There’s no second can or he might be tempted. As it is he’s lost his appetite.

Mycroft checks that he is really alone and then sits on his sofa and rubs at his forehead.


	19. Soupe aux haricots

At 5 o’clock, when the little bell dings in his office, Mycroft is no closer to either concluding his work, answering the question that has been hanging over him since Sherlock’s unfortuitous visit, or deciding his menu for the evening.

Not for the first time in his life, he expects that he wants too much that he doesn’t deserve. ‘You can’t have it all,’ he tells himself firmly, all the while wishing desperately that he could.

Lestrade, no idiot, guesses something is amiss.

Their conversations, already little more than small talk and shoptalk, dwindle to commentary on the immediate present, and long silences. Lestrade doesn’t ask questions, not verbally anyway. He sticks close though, spending nights at Mycroft’s flat, or coaxing him upstairs above the shop, and Mycroft lets him.

It doesn’t help him decide.

Closing the curtains makes the yard and the world outside seem distant. Outside of the office, Mycroft can force himself to forget his work, though the nagging worry remains- what would he do without it? He’s never known anything else.

They grow lazy with their meals. The metallic tang and scrape as Mycroft opens a can of beans reminds him, yet again, of Sherlock’s visit. He dumps them into a sieve and rinses off the starchy brine while Lestrade chops through onions and carrots, a couple of smoked sausages from the butcher’s, slipped to Lestrade by the assistant in a moment of solidarity.

It can’t go on, Mycroft thinks, as they wait for the soup to cook, seemingly hours. He has to say something.

He waits until they’ve nearly finished eating, the soup filling but somehow not quite enough. Lestrade toys with the wrinkled white beans in the bottom of his bowl.

“Listen,” he says, breaking the silence first. “Just so you know, no hard feelings.”

“What?”

“I know what you’re going to say. I’m not happy about it, but I get it. You’re in… something in city hall. I guess they’re putting the screws on you about me.”  
Mycroft watches his face and wonders how Lestrade can be so close to the truth and so far away from it at the same time.

“It’s…” he starts, all his rehearsed words flying from his mind. It’s unfair. He’s given a lot for his work, willingly. He’s had no qualms about taking harsh and decisive action before, but it’s one thing to throw himself down on a sword and another to push Lestrade onto it.

A bean slides off of his spoon, lax in his hand and makes them both jump when it splashes back into Mycroft’s bowl. Mycroft looks down at it. It’s both pitiable and infuriating.

“I need to go to London,” he says, with a strange cold calm. “There’s a problem with my long-term residency. I may have to spend some time…”

Lestrade’s whole body lifts with a note of hope. “They’re trying to deport you or something?” He almost sounds grateful. That, Mycroft supposes, is because it sounds like mere paperwork, and there’s always a loophole. You can fight paperwork. You can’t fight apathy.

“Not quite, but it seems there’s a question of if they’re going to renew my contract or not.”

“You could get another job,” Lestrade says promptly. The idea to Mycroft is as alien as the far side of Mars. Could he? “Or start your own business.”

Lord, the idea. Lestrade stares at him, pleased and baffled as Mycroft laughs.

“I’m not sure my line of work goes well with the entrepreneurial spirit-”

“Consulting then,” Lestrade suggests, dropping his spoon.

“I need to go to London first,” Mycroft replies.

“How long for?”

“A week. More. It’s unclear at present.”

“Alright.” Lestrade stirs his soup around. The dregs in the bowl have now gone cold, but he smiles with the residual warmth of it in his body. “I’ll wait here for you then.”


	20. Tarte à l’Oignon

London is damp and grey with winter, a penetrating dirty cold that sinks through even Mycroft’s thickest three-piece. He has a deep love for his country that is old enough and generous enough to overlook the gum dotting the pavements like leprosy, the tired homeless and the continual downward drift of smut from Heathrow.

It’s not like Paris is an idyll either.

Nonetheless, the sight of it is pallid in comparison to his cobble-roads and charm of his French city. Or even Oxford, where he spent the better years of his young adulthood.

Once within sight of Westminster, he makes his call. There’s a hint of well-heeled surprise at his suggestion, and then a tentative agreement is made. Eight o’clock, this evening.

Borough market provides what he’s after, under it’s green iron roof, like a greenhouse. He picks his way amongst the hawkers and stalls, and finds what he wants, before retreating to his car, and from the car, to his flat.

The kitchen is cold from disuse, and he leaves it so, in order to keep the butter firm, and then he rolls up his sleeves and begins to cook.

The second car arrives at 7:59, and hovers a moment until 8:01, in order to be coyly late. It’s with undisguised curiosity that Lady Smallwood enters; she’s never seen Mycroft outside of Westminster before and she has no doubt whatsoever that she never will again. So she makes the most of this little foray into unfamiliar territory.

“Come in.”

He takes her coat, and hangs it by the door, outside of which her security lurks.

“Thank you for coming.”

“Thank you for the invitation,” she replies, a touch wry. She supposes this is about secure privacy for whatever conversation it is they are about to have. She’s not wrong. She’s not wholly right either.

It’s a little like an awkward date, she thinks, taking a seat at his insistence and a drink at his suggestion. Not that she isn’t cautious. Knowingly, he tips a draught into a glass from the same bottle and makes no comment when she doesn’t drink immediately.

She does, in the end. If he wanted to poison her, he wouldn’t be stupid enough to do it in person.  
The flat is scented with the smell of cooking; rather unexpectedly homely, she thinks. In fact, she notes, this is all rather unlike the Mycroft Holmes she’s familiar with.

Certainly different to the man who returned from Moscow.

“France seems to agree with you,” she says, wanting to cut through the knot of silence.

“Yes,” he replies. “Excuse me.”

He leaves her a moment to herself, and busies himself with plates, deft as any sommelier. The pastry crust is golden brown and perfectly crisp when he cuts through it, the egg and onion filling creamy yellow and caramel in colour.

“And you’ve learnt to cook.”

“A hobby,” he agrees. “I thought I might acquire one.”

“So I see. And how is Gregory Lestrade?”

His movements stutter ever so slightly, but he doesn’t seem wholly surprised that she knows the name. She no doubt has the files too, the whole paper trail. The whole commentary on his foolishness.

“He’s well.”

“I assume that’s what I’m here to talk to you about.”

“In part. It’s more to do with my lease.”

“Lease?”

“My flat. The office. I want to buy them.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I’m not,” he says, with the clean cold knife of a voice that she knows so much better than this man who has made her a quiche. “I’m deadly serious.”

“Whatever for?”

“Because I don’t want to go to Asia, and you don’t want to lose me.” He sits back and looks at her, calculating. “I expect you’ve heard all kinds of stories about how I’ve gone to the dogs. That I’ve lost my touch, and for a while, I very nearly worried about it, and then I remembered- you don’t have anyone else with my capabilities and frankly, I can do anything I want because you need me.”

“There are other clever men.”

“There’s no one as clever as me, not even my little brother, so this is what I want. I want my own department. My own little home office away from home, and you’re going to give it to me because I’ve given you years and years of my life, and I am tired of it.”

She gapes at him in disbelief at firstly, the idea that he could be tired of it, and secondly the baldness of his demands.

“No one is disputing your service,” she says, stalling.

“Then give me a meaningful retirement, without threats. Do you know how many ingredients are in this?”

Lady Smallwood looks down at her plate, and takes his question at face value. She can taste cream, and egg, and salt. Onion and cheese and butter. Flour of course, for the pastry. “Seven or eight,” she guesses.

“Four.”

“Then my complements to the chef,” she says dryly. “Mycroft, be reasonable.”

“I am. Give me my own department and I will take your boring little onion spies and your cheap information, and I’ll find the best way to use it.”

Lady Smallwood regards him with a long hard look for a long tense moment.

“You have a terrible penchant for drama,” she says at last, “But you can cook.” She breaks off a piece of the tarte with her fork and considers. “I will ask about the lease, I will ask about the department, but there’s something I need you to do first.”

He eyes her narrowly, suspicious. “Very well.”

“Simply repeat after me: ‘Elizabeth’.”

He frowns. “Elizabeth.”

“ ‘I have fallen in love and it’s serious, so I would like a permanent desk job to suit.’”

Mycroft looks bilious. But he says it. The words seem very simple.

“I’ll see what can be done,” she replies, rich with amusement. “And for future reference, I was married. I know how it is. I’m not a monster.”

“I see.”

“You old fool.” She lifts her glass and touches it to his. “Congratulations and to think I’d live to see the day.”

“You sent Sherlock to stir me up.”

“Well, you weren’t going to come of your own accord, and I do like seeing you both settled. Besides,” she twinkles at him over her dinner. “It worked like a charm.”


	21. Vacherin du Mont d'or

_“Hello?”_

The signal crackles and warps and then connects again.

_“Brother.”_

_“Good evening, and how fares my favourite adventurer?”_

_“Don’t be bad.”_

_“Enjoying the Orient?”_

_“It’s cold. We had to eat live food. I blame you.”_

Mycroft chuckles heartily, and then switches languages. “You need to brush up on your grammar or you’ll never pass your exam. How many hours have you been there now? Three? Tut tut.”

“Oh, shut up.” there’s a noise on the other end of the phone, which Mycroft identifies as jet-lagged Doctor Watson’s grousing.

Sherlock moves and a door clicks. “How’s the family?”

“They’re fine. They’ll be sending you a Christmas card soon,” Mycroft replies, thumbing a message on a second phone. The orders dispatch is lagging. “Keep an eye on the post. And Mummy sends her love.” The last, of course, is not code.

“Yes, yes,” Sherlock replies. Mycroft can picture him: the outfit, the rather industrial little hotel.

“ _Good luck,_ ” Mycroft adds, “ _and season’s greetings._ ”

 _“Bye, fatty!”_ Sherlock throws back, and hangs up, laughing.

Lestrade grins at Mycroft over the back of the sofa. “I can’t believe how many languages you speak. What was that? Chinese?”

“Yes,” Mycroft lies, because Greg can’t tell the difference. “Asian businesses have no concept of Christmas holidays.”

“Well they don’t celebrate it,” Lestrade replies, scooting over to make room for him. “Anyway.” He stretches out, showing an indecent amount of belly.

“Tuck your shirt in,” Mycroft says, “We’re expecting company.”

Not much company; he couldn’t tolerate anything as much as a party, but the women have Lestrade as wrapped around their fingers as Mycroft does, and know that politeness is agony and that he’s too British to refuse once Lestrade has agreed.

Besides, Mycroft has almost made his peace with this rag-taggle of extras in his life. Sally is a terror, but Molly is quiet, and he can’t argue the fact that they have his and Lestrade’s best interests at heart, and more to the point he has no wish to sour things when he has only just secured them.

“What are you thinking?” Lestrade asks, sidling up to him.

“I’m marvelling at how much I’ve lowered my standards.”

“ _Bloody cheek,_ ” Lestrade says, grinning. “Don’t give me that.” He smells of roast potatoes and cologne, in a weird and heady combination. They’ve had turkey, because it’s traditional, with chestnuts because that’s French, and more besides. There’s little to no catering to be done for when the girls arrive but Lestrade has the little spruce-wood box out on the counter, and the cheese is a good one direct from the supplier. The spruce is years old, cut by hand, but still a little resinous.

It sits in a muddle in the corner with the ubiquitous clump of garlic they always have to hand, and the bottles of white chilling in the fridge. They’ll stud the cheese with cloves of garlic and bake it until soft and dripping. They’ll eat it with bread with their bare hands.

Lestrade finds the weak spot behind his ear and tests to see how far Mycroft is from his own melting point.

“Stop that. Later.”

Lestrade grins. “Alright, later,” he promises. It’s an excellent word, Mycroft thinks. ‘Later,’ he thinks in a list in every language he knows. There’s so many of them. It has it’s own nuance in each one. Like flavour.

Without having to think about it, Mycroft reaches across and helps himself to a little bit. To tide him over, until later.

“Hm,” Lestrade says, with approval.

They still eat well, but Mycroft feels less prone to gluttony. After all, he has it all. There’s no need to scrabble against time and pressure any more. He can savour it instead. Lestrade, as always, is in no rush.

Later, after, before the end of the year and the rest of their lives, Lestrade stretches out his legs under the covers and says, “I’m thinking of writing down some recipes.”

“Oh?”

“Nothing special. Just the stuff we cook and like. Just as a side thing.”

“By all means.”

“Hm,” Lestrade says again. “Our recipes.”

“Remind me to make you floating islands some time soon.”

“What do they taste like?”

Mycroft shows him and Lestrade grins up at the ceiling in the dark.

“Sounds like a good recipe,” he says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And of course, Greg went on to be wildly successful as a cook-book writer under a pen name; and Molly gave up the gift shop and moved into the cafe; and Anderson was happy to gossip forever and gave up being a butcher to handle Greg's online media presence; and Mike got letters from Lestrade and laughed his head off; and Sherlock and John fixed a diplomatic issue in Asia with zero diplomacy and got married in a whirlwind unplanned ceremony on their way home; and most of all, Mycroft continued to be well-fed and happy. 
> 
> The End :D

**Author's Note:**

> (I do not give permission to repost, reproduce or archive this fanfic in part or in it's entirety to any other website except with prior written consent provided by myself, nor any profit be made from any of these works under any circumstances whatsoever.)


End file.
